Featured Domains

Back in May Apple did something smart: it went after the iPhone5.com domain name well in advance of the launch of the new device.

A week after Apple filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization, the owner of the domain name relinquished control.

The domain name is now owned by Apple and pointing to the apple.com nameservers. Thanks to Apple’s advance work it was primed and ready for today’s big iPhone 5 announcement…

Except it wasn’t.

Right now if you type in iPhone5.com it doesn’t resolve. [Update: as of Wednesday evening the domain name now forwards to Apple.com with a tracking code for Apple to know the visit came from an iPhone5.com type-in.]

All Apple has to do is forward it to iPhone.com. It’s pretty simple.

You see companies miss “little” things like this all the time. But I assumed Apple was on the ball since it worked to obtain the domain name in advance of its launch.

There are a few notable stories in the domain name industry that I missed writing about over the past week, so here’s a quick run down.

A “monster” of an acquisition – Mesh Digital, which owns domain name registrar DomainMonster, has been acquired by Host Europe Group for an undisclosed sum. DomainMonster isn’t a huge registrar, but it has proven quite adept at mastering domain registrations when new top level domains enter their “general availability period”. This will come in handing with hundreds of TLDs coming on line in the next couple years.

iPhone5.com – Apple filed a UDRP to get iPhone5.com earlier this month. The owners put up an initial fight before deciding to hand the domain over the Apple this week.

Vanity.com – Quite a stink going on over at TheDomains about this UDRP filing. I hope there’s more to this story than meets the eye. For what it’s worth, the owner of the domain has had it since at least 2005. The company was formed in Nevada.